Author: Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics Feed

Old buildings are imbued with problems and possibilities shaped by their material condition. This article unfolds around material stories circulating on Insta-gram with the hashtag #byggnadsvård, using the Swedish concept byggnadsvård (‘building care’)…

This paper offers a concept of working relations as a complement and extension to existing theories of maintenance, care and repair. Building on the cases of an umbrella, a tractor and a pond, it advances seven propositions that might guide and inform …

Repair in the post-Soviet context shows a specific historicity, linked with Soviet consumer culture, that has caused the Soviet socioeconomic system be characterised as a ‘repair society’. People’s experiences and their narratives of the lively repair …

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics Feed

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics Feed

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics Feed

This article sets out to explore how reuse is enacted in a Swedish-language Face-book group called Reuse More. In this forum, people are encouraged to post photos and descriptions of what they have reused and how, share with and inspire others to be cr…

Gamlegård farm at the Kulturens Östarp open-air museum, the von Echstedtska Manor farm at Värmland’s Museum, and Oktorpsgården farm at the Skansen open-air museum are three disparate farmhouses scattered across southern Sweden whose histories have very…

This article examines how domestic building repair is represented as a site of experiential learning in Finnish interior design magazines. Situated within heritage studies, the analysis explores how lifestyle media portray the relationships between peo…

This paper examines how community-driven mending knowledge travels across time and into contemporary schooling, and what conditions allow it to persist. We pair a concise historical backdrop through a timeline called “How Mending Survives”, with a prac…

This article critically examines dominant sustainability narratives that prioritise technological innovation, market-based solutions and individual behaviour while often neglecting the socio-economic structures driving overconsumption. Drawing on quali…

This article reads Finnish linguist and ethnographer Matthias Alexander Castrén’s published letters as travel writing influenced both by imperialist discourses and the tradition of Finnish travel writing. The article examines the letter formulae and th…

The image of Steppe Ukraine as a historical region has mainly been constructed based on narratives originating from urban centres that are often perceived as alien to this territory and people. Being one of the most industrial and urbanised parts of Uk…

The article aims to unsettle the meaning of gender assignment for Ukrainian variants of the dragonslayer wonder tale of ATU 312D, “Kotyhoroshko”, which is represented by a child hero through a post-structural deconstruction on four levels: language, jo…

This study analyses the rules of circulation of money (and wealth in general) in Qing-era (1644–1911) Chinese texts on the supernatural. It is based on the popular collections of stories by writers Pu Songling, Ji Yun and Yuan Mei.Ever since the 19th c…

The Sundarbans, which stretches from the Bay of Bengal over parts of India and Bangladesh, is the largest mangrove forest in the world, constantly in flux due to the erosion and cyclones that can drastically reshape the land. This article explores how …

Forests are one of the most commonly recurring settings of folktales and oratures. In the popular imagination, forests are often seen as the site of the unknown, the non-human, enchanting and, mystifying, however, in the northeastern cultures of India,…

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics Feed

This article investigates a religious group in contemporary northeast China. The group is formed by ritual experts and adherents of a traditional folk belief in animal spirits. The group runs as an institution providing aid to those who need psychologi…

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics Feed